Quote from jimrockford:
IBj,
Sometimes a CS rep mishandles an issue, and refuses to allow it to be escalated to higher authority. Sometimes problems just don't get addressed through the system. Sometimes the trouble ticket system itself seems to malfunction. These situations require some sort of backup communications channel outside of the trouble ticket system. You have posted that in such situations, people can send private messages to you via EliteTrader.
Have you considered that people might not be willing or able to communicate through such a channel? Many IB customers don't read ET or have an ET membership, so that they won't have any way to proceed or to communicate in such situations, and will instead come up flat against a brick wall, without even knowing that the ET option exists. Others may have access to ET, but not want to use it for account management purposes, because of concerns over privacy and security. Did you know that ET moderators have unlimited and unrestricted access to read all private messages sent over ET? I'm not faulting ET, and I think that your participation in the public ET forums is a wonderful thing that should definitely continue, but I think that ET's private message system should not be used in order to address issues with individual customer accounts.
I think that you need to give further thought to what happens when the trouble ticket system fails, due to machine problems or to human error, and then some sort of backup system is needed. EliteTrader PM is not, in my view, an adequate backup system.
